On Wings of Blood

by Warhammer 40K

  Where the Long Fangs had crouched seconds ago, a deep and immaculate bowl had appeared in the rock, its surface smooth and crackling with residual energy. One of his packmates was pointing at two flyers retreating in the distance. Skaldr’s tac-display magnified the image, revealing two black ships fleeing side by side across the shimmering mesa. They were narrower than the broad-winged fighters, with long sharp beaks like those of carrion crows.

  Skaldr voxed Anvarr.

  ‘Voidravens!’

  ‘I see them,’ growled Anvarr, pelting a Razorwing with las-fire as he glanced at his tac-display. The two bombers were slowing into a climb, preparing to make another supersonic run across the battlefield. Anvarr and his wingman could barely contain three fast-moving ships, let alone five.

  The Voidravens curled back towards the battlefield.

  Apart from Skaldr and his Wolf Guard, the only other ground troops out in the open were the pack of Long Fangs whom Kaarle had deployed earlier. The veterans were plodding towards the crater to replace their fallen brothers and maintain the line. If the Voidravens hit them, the xenos ground troops would eventually overrun the Wolf Guard pinned inside the bunkers.

  Anvarr’s Stormwolf shuddered as another blast smashed into his snout. It would be a miracle if there were any Blood Claws left alive in the hold. He returned fire, the fighter swerving to avoid his volley. Anvarr knew that attempting to save his brothers on the ground would mean abandoning Kaarle to the Razorwings. Not even a Stormfang pilot of his brother’s ferocity could prevent three agile xenos fighters from tearing him apart.

  The Voidravens accelerated, commencing their run towards Skaldr and the Long Fangs.

  Kaarle voxed him.

  ‘Save them, brother,’ he laughed. ‘And sing them the saga of Kaarle Greywing upon your return.’

  ‘I shall,’ Anvarr said. ‘Louder than thunder, brother.’

  Kaarle’s Stormfang unleashed a stream of bolter fire, herding one of the Razorwings into a sharp turn, freeing Anvarr to plunge towards the approaching Voidravens.

  Anvarr circled the research station as Kaarle fought to keep the Razorwings occupied. The bombers were still miles away, but their distance to the battlefield was shrinking faster than Anvarr believed possible. He scanned the rocks and bunkers before him with the eyes of a hunter, seeking any elevation or cover that might provide a tactical advantage.

  He voxed Skaldr.

  ‘Do you have any Sky Claws left?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Get him onto the roof of that high bunker to the north-west. And tell those Long Fangs to cover the airspace above that comms-relay on the other side.’

  Skaldr directed his troops as the Voidravens closed in, hurtling low over the mesa, carving waves of crystal dust in their wake. Anvarr swooped low, grazing the ground as he hid behind a long wall of crumbled rock, rifle fire scuttling across his Stormwolf’s hide as he calculated the speed of his approach, matching it to the lunatic velocity of the oncoming Voidravens.

  He was laughing now, drunk with feral adrenaline as he raced behind the rock wall to meet the bombers. When his Stormwolf lay a shattered wreck, perhaps then the machine-spirit would be appeased by his valour.

  As the Voidravens reached the edge of the battlefield, Anvarr raised his Stormwolf from behind the cover of the rocks, spraying las-bolts at the two bombers screaming towards him, seconds from collision.

  As the Space Wolves gunship reared into their path, the dark eldar pilots reacted with predictable precision. Performing a miracle of control and timing, they slowed from a scream to a shriek, Anvarr having given them just enough time to bank into a hard turn – one left, the other right. The Stormwolf redirected them like a stone diverting a stream.

  Anvarr hit the tail of a fleeing Voidraven, clipping its fins with a stream of las-bolts. The other bomber banked above the station’s shattered comms-relay, where waited Skaldr’s Long Fangs. They caught the ship in a web of heavy las-fire, punching through its exposed belly and driving it into the rocks in a glorious bloom of flame.

  Khanvir Marugaard heard his wingman’s ship detonate behind him. Khanvir was wrestling with the sticks of his own bomber, struggling to ride its momentum and slow the vessel enough to make another turn. He cruised low across the ground, past a high bunker and felt the bomber rock as if with an impact. He had taken las-fire from that gunship. Perhaps it had damaged a stabiliser.

  Khanvir pulled into another turn, steering towards the apes on the ground that had destroyed his wingman. He went to arm his void-lances when something smashed through the canopy, impaling his chest and pinning him to his seat. The dark eldar stared in disbelief at the whirring blade protruding from his body and thought he could make out a face grinning down at him from the other side of the shattered canopy. Then the blade revved faster and a churning fountain of his own blood obscured Khanvir’s view.

  Skaldr was reloading his bolt pistol when he saw the lone Sky Claw leap from the canopy of the second bomber before it crashed to the ground. The whelp cannonballed into the rocks, rolling several dozen feet before crashing to a halt. Skaldr almost laughed as moments later the battered warrior got to his feet, grinning through a mouthful of blood and twirling the pilot’s severed head above his own.

  A second explosion bellowed overhead and a shrieking cheer arose among the dark eldar. Anvarr’s valiant wingman had finally fallen, his Stormfang a blazing wreck as it slumped into the crags below. The three Razorwings that had torn it apart now circled the battlefield, surveying their outnumbered prey. The replacement Long Fangs were still trudging into position on the rocks nearby, readying their lascannons.

  Skaldr activated his chainsword as he voxed what remained of his warriors.

  ‘Advance, Wolves of Fenris,’ he howled. ‘Better to die with fangs bared than–’

  Something struck him in the throat. He grunted and dropped to one knee, his body shivering uncontrollably. Skaldr knew he had been hit by a poisoned shard fired from a xenos splinter rifle. His face contorted into a grimace of agony as the arcane toxin boiled his nervous system. He watched, helpless, as his Wolf Guard scattered from the bunkers and ran towards the dark eldar, bolters blazing. The black-armoured xenos and their craft swarmed like beetles over the crags to meet them, their ghostly faces gleeful. One of the circling Razorwings despatched a missile that exploded amid the ragged Space Wolves vanguard, expelling a disc of energy that sliced their legs out from under them. The dark eldar still clearly hoped to take them alive. But the xenos were arrogant indeed if they believed a pack of cornered Space Wolves could be rounded up like cattle.

  Skaldr rose to his feet, his head swimming, his every nerve aflame as his augmented biology fought the invading poison. A pack of Blood Claws trampled past him, hooting wild battle songs, chainswords in hand. Anvarr’s deployment. The Iron Priest’s Stormwolf surged into the sky behind them, hurling las-bolts at the circling Razorwings. He caught one of them, punching a black hole in its wing, as all three detached like bats from a cave roof and chased the Stormwolf from the battlefield with spears of disintegrator fire.

  The pack leader went to murmur private words of thanks after the indomitable Iron Priest, but the words refused to form on his lips. The Stormwolf disappeared into the canyon with the three Razorwings in pursuit. Skaldr shook his head and staggered after his battle-brothers, resolved to meet his death among them.

  Anvarr gunned the juddering Stormwolf down the canyon through which he and the rest of his ill-fated assault wing had entered, casting aside sheets of crystal spray as he veered down a fork in the path ahead. The Razorwings raced after him without slowing. The passage ahead was strung with natural arches, sculpted by the crystal-toothed winds. The Stormwolf’s damaged thrusters threaded a line of smoke through the rock formations as Anvarr dipped and dodged between them, occasionally scraping a wing or swerving clumsily to avoid a collision. Behind him, the Razorwing
s swooped and twisted with ease, flowing over the landscape like water.

  A bolt of fire flashed past and destroyed a rocky bridge ahead of him. He swerved to avoid a curtain of tumbling stone, dodging deeper into the canyon network before his pursuers could fire again. Anvarr drank in the odour of baking rock cooled by the coursing winds, his mask feeding his predatory senses all the tactical data he required. The smell of hot stone intensified and he broke away down a slot canyon as spikes of fire exploded behind him. The Razorwings stood on their sides as they followed him, one after the other, relentless as the canyon winds that threatened to wrench the sticks from Anvarr’s hands and fling his Stormwolf into the rocks. The Iron Priest fled deeper and deeper into the rocky maze, chasing the scent of burning stone carried upon a gathering wind as the dark eldar closed in behind him.

  Iruthyr cackled with excitement, nestling in the darkness of his cockpit as he chased the battered gunship down yet another canyon, this one cradling a wide river of crystal debris that sparkled beneath the blazing sun.

  ‘Sister, I’ll give you fifty slaves if you can shear off its wing,’ he laughed, his ghoulish features bathed green by the glowing runes on his console. He steadied his fighter against a strengthening wind.

  ‘Too easy,’ she replied. ‘I would prefer we destroy what is left of his thrusters and when he crawls from the wreckage, then we can play. Disintegrators only. Let’s say sixty slaves a limb…?’

  ‘As you wish, sister,’ Iruthyr said, his targeting icon hovering into place over the rear of the fleeing ship.

  The ape’s gunship suddenly accelerated, the gathering wind snatching away the black smoke now churning from its thrusters as it vanished through a gap in the canyon wall. Focused only upon his prey, Iruthyr dived after it, his fighter shaking. He noticed an air pressure warning flashing on his console.

  ‘Pull up,’ Izabella screamed through the comm. ‘The savage has led us into a trap.’

  Iruthyr pulled up, abandoning the hunt, his fighter convulsing now as a whirling storm of shards raked its fuselage like the claws of some ravenous beast, tearing into its hull. He struggled to follow his sister’s Razorwing as she accelerated into a steady climb above him, her wings also ragged with damage.

  They rocketed from the canyon and soared side by side above the mesa as chunks of rock streaked across the sky amid a glittering mist of crystal shards. Their wingman’s black fighter was visible ahead, the mercenary evidently seeking to abandon the twin archons to their fate. As Iruthyr and his sister did their best to dodge the raining debris, a boulder crashed into the black Razorwing like an asteroid, smashing the fighter to pieces. Iruthyr ducked to avoid the oncoming slipstream of debris and saw the pilot himself tumbling towards him as the shard-infested wind whipped the flesh from his bones.

  Gore sprayed Iruthyr’s canopy, blinding him, his fighter tipping as something smashed onto his wing. He fought to arrest his spin as dust and wind scoured the canopy clear, revealing sky and earth tumbling one over the other. He managed to level out, his sister still beside him. Together they climbed hard, their engines grinding, until they were free of the sucking wind. He gazed down at a vast twirling column of air, its tail wriggling through the canyon miles below as it rained destruction about the mesa.

  Izabella snarled over the comm.

  ‘A curse on this world.’

  Iruthyr glanced at his data display. His hull was in shreds, although both disintegrators remained functional.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Enough games. Let us return to the field, finish the apes and be gone.’

  Iruthyr and his sister followed the canyon back to the battle­field, leaving the hurricane far behind them. His tattered fighter trembled as he neared the station where the battle continued to rage. He armed his disintegrators, his sister abeam as they commenced a steady descent.

  Las-fire flashed at his back. Checking what remained of his sensor read-out, Iruthyr saw the smoking gunship thundering close behind, as if the storm itself had followed them from the canyon.

  Anvarr had followed his hunter’s nose back through the maze of canyons as surely as he had found his way into its boiling heart, luring his arrogant pursuers into the nearest shard-devil. But he had clipped several more rocks on the way back as he squirmed through the canyons, sheltering from the rain of stone and crystal fragments crashing overhead. Entire plates of ceramite had been prised from the Stormwolf’s hull, exposing pipes and cabling to the elements. He was down to two thrusters, one of which threatened to collapse every time he manoeuvred and spoiled his aim when he had tried to take out one of the Razorwings. The xenos fighters did not give him another chance.

  As they reached the smoking battlefield, they peeled off either side of him, curling as smoothly as their damaged wings would allow, preparing to fire upon Anvarr from either side as he approached.

  His damaged thruster finally surrendered and the Stormwolf slumped to one side, threatening to drop from the sky. The Razorwings fired, their disintegrators slicing the ground as they flew towards him, ready to cut the ruined Stormwolf in half.

  The beams flashed before Anvarr’s eyes as he murmured a prayer to the machine-spirit, aiming his heavy bolters to the left, his helfrost cannons to the right. The engine purred beneath him as he fired.

  The heavy bolters boomed at his flank as twin spikes of helfrost flashed overhead.

  Anvarr Rustmane did not flinch as both weapons hit their marks and the shattered fighters screamed past his canopy, crashing to the ground behind him.

  He ignored them and sped towards the battlefield, destroying a dark eldar skiff with las-fire and crushing a unit of squealing xenos beneath the belly of his Stormwolf as he ploughed the ruined gunship to a stop.

  Anvarr detached his helm, sporadic rifle fire crackling against the buckled hull as he clambered down the cockpit ladder to the hold where Cogfang awaited him, his master’s thunder hammer held ready in his slavering jaws. Anvarr slung the weapon over his shoulder as he booted the malfunctioning ramp to the ground, then raised it over his head, announcing his arrival to the power-armoured warriors battling outside amid the sweltering dust.

  ‘For Russ! For the Allfather!’

  He whistled three times at Cogfang, who comprehended his master’s instruction and bounded away. Anvarr dared a glance at the embossed wolf’s head on the bulkhead behind him, then pounded towards his brothers to join them in glory.

  Iruthyr Xynariis limped towards his sister’s crashed Razorwing. He had driven his own crippled ship into a deep drift of crystal shards that had worked their way through the plates of his armour and chewed his flesh as he ran. Izabella still lay in her cockpit. He clambered onto the downed fighter and heaved open the broken canopy to find her looking up at him, breathing hard, her legs pinned and broken by the crushed console. He paused for a moment, invigorated by his sister’s pain, the shrieks of his dying raiders carried by the hot winds.

  She seized him by the collar of his flight suit and yanked him towards her. Iruthyr realised she had a barbed knife at his throat.

  ‘The Kabal of the Forked Tongue stands for the two of us,’ she gasped. ‘Or it does not stand at all.’

  ‘Come, sister…’ he said, reaching for the huskblade at his belt.

  A low metallic growl startled the twins. They looked up to see a massive half-mechanised wolf standing on the prow of the ruined Razorwing, saliva leaking from its iron jaw as it watched them.

  Iruthyr and his sister faltered, uncertain whether to defend themselves or slit each other’s throats. The cyberwolf proved more decisive.

  The sky darkened into a starfield with the Ragnarök visible a short distance away. Anvarr growled into the vox once again.

  ‘Throne of Earth! Cease your blasted singing, I said!’

  The victory songs rising from the hold continued regardless, hardly improved by Cogfang’s piercing howls.

 
Skaldr laughed over the vox from the Thunderhawk that had been sent to pick him up.

  ‘You had better get used it, brother,’ he said. ‘Tonight the Deathwolves will honour Anvarr Rustmane with hours of song and oceans of mjod.’

  The great blond pack leader had acquitted himself well this day. He had shaken off a dose of dark eldar poison to cut down scores of kabalite pirates, later joking that his half-drunken state had only served to improve his swing. Skaldr’s deeds would certainly be worth a mention in the sagas, no doubt something else for him to smile about.

  Anvarr scowled as his passengers launched into another song. The Stormwolf’s makeshift repairs were holding up well, but hours more work awaited the Iron Priest upon docking. At least he had found a replacement totem that would properly honour the machine-spirit for today’s blessing.

  In the hold below, the three surviving Blood Claws raised beakers of mjod to their grumbling Iron Priest, and to the slack-faced heads of the dark eldar twins pinned to the engine bulkhead by their long black hair. The eyes of the metal wolf’s head gleamed.

  THE EMPEROR’S GRACE

  Nicholas Alexander

  The Grace’s engines screamed in protest and Mikal could feel their pain. It knifed through his ragged nerves and he gripped the control column of his battered aircraft with greater ferocity as the Marauder bomber bucked and lurched through the outer atmosphere. It seemed that the only thing holding the aircraft together was its indomitable machine-spirit. He doubted there was an undamaged structure in the airframe. The instrument panel had so many warning lights on that he had long since stopped looking at it. He needed no reminder of how close they were to catastrophe.

  Mikal peered ahead through the fractured canopy at the guiding lights of the Implacable Advance, the carrier that was their ultimate destination and sanctuary. The auspex was no longer functioning and he was reduced to visuals by which to navigate. He felt like a mythical sea captain from Holy Terra, in an age when its long-dead seas had still existed, seeking the perilous entrance to a home port on a storm-ravaged night. Like his forebear, Mikal struggled to maintain a bearing as his vessel pitched and rolled in the turbulent elements. Each time the Grace yawed off line, he hauled her back, praying to the machine-spirit that the movement would not cause that final spar to break or hydraulic system to fail.